Whitman offers to take polygraph over maid flap

LOS ANGELES - Meg Whitman launched a forceful effort Thursday to regain control of her campaign for governor, pledging to take a lie-detector test if necessary to prove that she and her husband were unaware they had employed an illegal-immigrant housekeeper for nine years until the woman confessed her status in 2009.

"If it comes to that, absolutely," she said at a hastily called news conference in Santa Monica, her husband, Griff Harsh, at her side. "Absolutely, because we were stunned."

But Whitman's lengthy defense was undercut by the second in a dramatic duel of widely broadcast news conferences as the housekeeper's attorney, Gloria Allred, produced a copy of a government letter sent six years before Nicandra Diaz Santillan was fired alerting the couple to potential problems. On the bottom of the letter was a note in what Allred said was Whitman's husband's handwriting: "Nicky, please check this. Thanks."

"Meg Whitman is exposed as a liar and a hypocrite," Allred said, pledging to present evidence the writing was Harsh's if the couple denied it.

After Allred's news conference, Harsh declined to say whether it was his handwriting on the letter from the Social Security Administration that told the couple that Diaz Santillan's Social Security number and name did not match. He then released a statement through the campaign acknowledging that he might have written the note.

"While I honestly do not recall receiving this letter . . . it is possible that I would have scratched a follow-up note on a letter like this," he said, adding that "neither Meg nor I believed there was a problem with Nicky's legal status."

Before Allred announced the presence of the writing, Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay, who is making her first run for public office, said that the couple had never seen such a letter. If one had been mailed, Diaz Santillan may have been responsible for taking it, she said.

"She may have intercepted the letter, it's very possible, I have no other explanation," Whitman said. "Nicky did bring in the mail and sort the mail. . . . It pains me to say that because, gosh, that's not the Nicky I knew."

The second day of conflict between the billionaire Republican candidate and her former $23-an-hour maid roiled the campaign for governor, as Whitman sought to limit damage by blaming the contretemps on her opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown. But she acknowledged that she had no evidence of his complicity.

The focus on an illegal-immigrant employee posed a potential threat to Whitman's candidacy because of timing - ballots are mailed to early voters next week - and the effect the dispute could have on key voter groups integral to her chances of success in November. Of particular concern was the effect on Latino voters and independents, both of whom have been sympathetic to immigrants, if conflicted about how to handle illegal immigration.

Brown's campaign denied that it was behind the emergence of Diaz Santillan and brushed aside Whitman's contention that officials had talked about the subject with a reporter two weeks ago.